Wednesday 09/09/26

Putin praises US peace efforts in call with Trump (Financial Times, Max Seddon) highlights Trump’s BFF complimenting American peacemaking efforts to end the war on Ukraine and said that Russia did not have “aggressive plans” against Europe. This came after “Trutin” (my name for them) had a call yesterday, the first time the two have spoken since western security officials stated that Russia was ramping up its “hybrid war” against Europe this summer, citing the attempted attack of a German airport last month by an explosives-laden drone. Putin obviously dismissed this as scaremongering and an excuse to justify the Europeans’ continued support for Ukraine. The leaders congratulated themselves on the negotiation efforts of Trump’s estate agent (Steve Witkoff) and his side-kick Jared Kushner. I’ll believe any progress when I see it.

US bans Canadian dairy, motorcycles and most alcoholic beverages (Financial Times, Ilya Gridneff, Ella Lee and Aime Williams) highlights the ongoing petulance of the US president as more bans have be slapped on Canadian products in an expansion of the existing sanctions on its northern neighbour. This came a day after Ottawa imposed $20bn-worth of retaliatory tariffs on US goods. This is just getting crazy.

States That Gave Data Centers Billions in Tax Breaks Are Now Ripping Up the Deals (Wall Street Journal, Amrith Ramkumar, Richard Rubin and Neil Mehta) highlights the increasing resistance to the build-out of data centres – this time at the state level as tax incentive agreements signed with data centre builders and operators to attract investment over a decade ago are now being reviewed. Since then, AI has powered massive demand for more data centres – and that has inflated the value of the tax exemptions to epic proportions. Ohio has become a major destination for data centres and the exemption for tech companies from sales taxes on computer servers and other equipment used by data centres is now worth over $1.5bn, over ten times the original state estimate. Some state lawmakers now want to repeal this exemption and renegotiate past deals with the likes of Amazon, Meta and Google. The deals secured exemptions for decades! * SO WHAT? * This is happening with increasing frequency across more states as data centres are becoming a political pariah. It means that data centre projects may migrate to states that continue to provide the tax breaks – like Indiana, West Virginia and Wyoming. At the moment, over 35 states offer sales tax exemptions or similar benefits and this is important because the chips and servers inside data centres are a major cost for every project. Given that this tax averages out at 6-7%, the savings are significant when you’re talking hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. It seems to me that tech companies will just migrate to states with the best benefits.

Back home, UK government pays highest interest rate on 30-year bond since 1998 (The Guardian, Heather Stewart) shows that debt is becoming even more expensive as the

government had to pay up big time – 5.82% to borrow £4bn. The new chancellor maintained on Monday this week that he is committed to balancing the books. All the while, the markets are reflecting concern about rising inflation. War and weather threaten another burst of UK inflation, BoE governor warns (Financial Times, Sam Fleming, George Parker and Delphine Strauss) emphasises the point as the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, warned MPs yesterday that there could be a new bout of inflation set to infect our economy thanks to the Iran war and El Niño. Burnham has got a massive job on his hands…

Then in Oil nears $100 as US launches new strikes on Iranian tankers (Financial Times, Steff Chávez, Najmeh Bozorgmehr, Jamie Smyth and Verity Ratcliffe) we see that oil continues its march to the $100 mark thanks to more aggression in the Middle East from both sides and Norway’s oil and gas production to plummet in threat to UK supplies (Daily Telegraph, Jonathan Leake) cites a report by the Norweigian Offshore Directorate which shows that its gas production in the North Sea will fall as soon as 2030, with some gas fields starting to decline this year. Norway supplies almost 50% of our gas needs on an annual basis but up to 90% in winter – so this is serious! This should give the current government a lot of food for thought. Let’s hope they take positive action…

In climate news, Wake up and smell the coffee: Farmers turn to new crops after awful harvest (Daily Telegraph, Patrick Galbraith) continues the theme of the effect of changing weather patterns on our daily lives – and reflects on our failing traditional crops of potatoes, peas, barley and wheat while farmers have already started experimenting with crops that are usually associated with hotter climes – like tea, coffee and custard apples. Butternut squash and olives are also on the menu! According to the Energy and Climate Change Unit, the upcoming harvest is going to be the worst one since the mid-1980s, so you can’t blame farmers from trying different things. Food inflation set to peak at 6.4% next year in ‘perfect storm’ (The Times, Guy Taylor) highlights the effect of all this as the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) has just forecasted that food inflation will hit almost 4% by Christmas before peaking at 6.4% next year. * SO WHAT? * The FDF got their predictions wildly wrong before (it predicted 9% at year-end in April – so these “experts” were way off!) so they’ve covered their 🍑s by saying that food prices are going to stay “significantly above historical averages” until the second half of 2027. Stats like this (useless though they’ve proved to be!) will quite literally give Burnham food for thought in the run-up to the Budget on October 28th. One thing that is a fact, though, is that food prices have risen by almost 40% since 2020!

Investors led by L Catterton to buy controlling stake in Hyrox (Financial Times, Josh Noble) highlights the decision by a consortium led by L Catterton, the PE firm backed by LVMH, to buy a controlling stake in the fitness company Hyrox. The deal gave Hyrox an implied valuation of around €600m. Hyrox has boomed since the Covid pandemic and over 1.4m people took part in Hyrox races during 2025-26, up from just 80,000 on 2022-23. Events draw thousands of competitors in 30 countries. There’s even talk about Hyrox being in the Olympic games! * SO WHAT? * I am sceptical because these things are often fads and it seems to me that they can be difficult to sustain over long periods of time because people just get bored and move on to the next thing or some kind of scandal invariably emerges that chips away at a sport’s popularity. Something that calls itself “Hyrox” because it is an amalgamation of the words “Hybrid Rockstar” (this is not a joke) is surely a fad, no? I would suggest that a decent comparative here is CrossFit which has boomed since the early to mid 2010s but then its star has waned in the last few years because of the controversial founder (Greg Glassman) and the death of a top athlete at the CrossFit Games in 2024, Lazar Dukic, who drowned in full view of everyone. I think that it survives because it has an affiliate gym model where owners pay to be able to call themselves a

CrossFit gym and they have a strong community feel. I don’t think that Hyrox has that – but who knows? For me, community is good but it’s not enough – just look at what happened to Peloton (a company which L Catterton was also an early investor).

In Mistral AI raises €3bn in Europe’s largest venture funding round (The Times, Chris Dorrell) we see that Europe’s leading AI start-up has just raised another chunk of money which now implies a valuation of over €21bn. The extra money will be used for growing its computing capacity and frontier research. * SO WHAT? * I really hope that Mistral AI works because it would be nice to have a proper European rival to the American giants that dominate. Mistral AI differs from the Americans because it has a “vertically integrated offering” which covers its own computing capacity, frontier models and applications. Also, many of its models are open-weight, which means that its customers can tweak the models and run them on their own hardware. This is actually a very attractive feature because it means that sensitive data can be processed locally rather than over the cloud.

Meta unveils AI personal assistant linked to WhatsApp and Instagram (Financial Times, Cristina Criddle) highlights the advent of a new personal AI agent, called Muse, that will be available across WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. Muse can be connected to tools including emails and smart exercise bikes. * SO WHAT? * Meta has 3bn active users, so the opportunity here is vast but I do think that a lot of the success here is going to depend on how useful it really is, how intrusive it is (in terms of tracking) and how much users trust Zuck with sensitive information given all the recent legal shenanigans. Meta has integrated things like Stripe which will enable the assistant to make purchases. I guess this is all part of moving it towards being an “everything app” like WeChat and making it more attractive to stay inside Meta’s virtual walled-garden.

In UK to force Apple and Google to block explicit images on children’s smartphones (The Guardian, Dan Milmo and Kiran Stacey) we see that, after failing to come to an agreement with the UK government, Apple and Google are going to be forced to block explicit images on children’s smartphones by law. Work will begin on an act of parliament to ban under-18s from taking, sharing or viewing nude images on their devices. There’s still time for an agreement to be reached, but this probably adds a bit of extra urgency and feeds into the broader effort to protect kids online.

In a quick scoot around some of today’s other interesting stories, Britain’s grid operator gave Palantir contract without inviting rival bids (Financial Times, Amy Borrett, Rachel Millard and Laura Hughes) highlights the latest controversy with Palantir – that our state-owned electricity system operator, NESO, has awarded the controversial AI company Palantir a £21m contract without fielding any rival bids! NESO agreed the contract last month, an extension of the previous agreement which started in March 2021. * SO WHAT? * Given misgivings about Palantir’s involvement with the NHS, the MoD and the police, this further highlights concerns about the British state’s reliance on Palantir. There are rising concerns about increasing our reliance on American tech and a single supplier in particular. You do wonder how credible the alternatives are, though…

UK air traffic control breakdown strands hundreds of thousands of passengers (The Guardian, Gwyn Topham) highlights chaos at UK airports yesterday thanks to an air traffic control failure. This is Britain’s third major stoppage in just over three years. Apparently, the cause of the glitch was different to the ones that caused chaos in 2023 and 2025. This will cause a lot of disruption and you do wonder whether there were any outside parties involved…

Aperol’s Maker Bets Americans Are Ready for a Pinker, Sweeter Spritz (Wall Street Journal, Katie Deighton) shows that Campari is really getting behind its newer, sweeter Aperol alternative – Sarti Rosa. The Sarti Spritz differs from the Aperol spritz because it’s fruitier, with mango, passion fruit and blood orange. Campari has been trying to push Sarti to markets across Europe since 2022 and it’s now launching in the US. It debuted in the UK earlier this year. The hype is building and it sounds like we’re entering the Sarti era!

Then in Computacenter UK listing ‘under review’ after 95% jump in profit (The Times, Chris Dorrell) we see that one of the FTSE100’s final remaining tech companies yesterday announced a 95% uplift in profit but hinted that it wouldn’t necessary keep its listing in the UK. * SO WHAT? * Computacenter is a UK-based tech reseller and it is now one of the only UK-listed companies that has direct exposure to the AI boom. The company upgraded its forecasts for the year end after this stunning half year performance. It helps big organisations source, build and run IT infrastructure from laptops to data centres.

I like a good mash-up – and here’s something that brings together old and new!